Watch: AWS exec Puneet Chandok on cloud enabling businesses across India reinvent

The Indian arm of Amazon Web Services (AWS) has had a busy 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating cloud adoption. Keeping up with the rise in demand for its services, the company has also announced a second cloud infrastructure region in Hyderabad, which is set to be operational by mid-2022.

Being built at a cost of $2.7 billion, the new AWS Hyderabad region will have three availability zones. Currently, AWS has 77 availability zones and 24 infrastructure regions globally, and plans to open more five AWS regions and 15 availability zones across India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. As of 2020, the company commands 51.8% share of the global cloud infrastructure market.

AWS India has also seen growth in terms of adoption from a host of enterprises and startups. Fintech companies such as PolicyBazaar and Zerodha,  automobile maker Ashok Leyland, OTT platforms such as SonyLiv, Hotstar are some of the high profile names it has worked with this year.    

In an interview with TechCircle, Puneet Chandok, president – commercial business, Amazon Internet Services, AWS India and South Asia spoke about how the pandemic has created a perfect storm for cloud adoption in India, unique challenges in the local market and why the cloud growth is here to stay. 

“Cloud reacts well to uncertainty. I think if you look at the last nine months, we've actually seen cloud adoption accelerate by many years,” Chandok told TechCircle.

According to Chandok, the company has three investments as part of the overall plan in India. First is building counter technical teams across diverse segments. “Secondly we're building what I call force multipliers, this refers to professional services training, startup programs such as Activate, which helps early stage startups to come to the cloud,” Chandok said.

Another ‘force multiplier’ includes the cloud garage that AWS built in collaboration with consulting firm Deloitte in Mumbai. This is expected to bring together the expertise of both the companies for better innovation. 

The third investment will be in building infrastructure, such as the upcoming AWS cloud region in Telangana. 

Chandok joined AWS in June 2019. Prior to joining AWS, he held leadership roles with McKinsey & Co. and IBM Global Services.